MS Abbekerk

Are you looking for a particular merchant ship during World War II or for its crew or an events she took part in? Here are some hints, tips and links from the experiences I had over the last 3 years building this site. In separate frames I will show the results I had in my research.

As a sign of modern times, my research mostly took place on the Internet. Being busy with Abbekerk now for over 3 years its amazing to see how the available information expands. The invaluable Convoyweb for example. When I started to research Abbekerk routes there were only three hits on Convoyweb. Two years later her whole war-time route, including the independent section, can be found there.

First there are three distinct fields of research related to ship in WOII. The ship herself, her routes and the people who sailed on her/events she took part in. I divided this chapter in these three main sections.

The ship
General information.
Most information on ships is usually found on the (former) company websites. Some points for attention:
Shipnames often come back in newer (and older) ships. Sometimes shipnames of sunken ships return even during the war on a new ship. Be sure to have the right year of building.
Know the exact spelling of the shipsname. But also search on common misspellings (Abbekerk and Abbekirk) and pay attention to the countries way of prefix the ship (MS Abbekerk and MV Abbekerk or even SS Abbekerk and believe it or not: USS Abbekirk)
For dutch ships some informative websites are:

• VNS
• KPM
• KNSM
• The Shipslist very usefull for finding ships and shipping lines and more
  

If your ship was sunk or damaged by a Uboat try:

• Uboat.net
• uboatwaffe.net

For Dutch merchant ships the former London Archives 1940 – 1946 are now managed in Holland by Henk Meurs. His website has some information but use his guestbook or email to contact him personally for information. His extensive archive contains all from movementscards to crewlists, from official reports of sinkings to rewarded medals.

The Lloyds registerof ships is now digitized for 1935 – 1945: plimsollshipdata

Some forums to include in your search:

• The forum Mercantile Marine
• Warsailors

Pictures
Also try company websites but also try Google. If there are to many hits, filter on “greyscale only”.
Some good picture websites:

• Old ships pictures
• Arendnet (Dutch)

Museum (picture)sites:

• Picture Australia
• John A Marsh Maritime Research Institute South Africa

I wasn’t very succesfull on forums with pictures. Although I did get some of them through people I met on forums.

The routes
One site that leaves all others in its shadow: www.convoyweb.org.uk. Maybe not the most userfriendly site, but its database is powerfull and packed with (convoy) information of a staggering   28.000 convoys and 400.000 shipmovements and its still growing! A look at this site gave me a first insight of the extend of the merchant shipping and the allied convoy system.
If your ship doesn’t pop up, check the spelling!

Other links:

• Naval history day by day

The ships people and the events they took part in
Unfortunately the people who were involved and still are alive are few. For Abbekerk I found only two people still alive in the US (evacuated troops from Tjilitjap).
Your country’s veteran websites can be a good source, but also they can be non existing.
Official National Archives are worth a try. Some of them are getting on line better and better.

• National Archive Great Britain
  

  casualty report London Docks 9 septeber 1940

• Nationaal Archief Nederland
• Australian National Archive
• The forum Mercantile Marine

Be creative! For Abbekerk it turned out she played a unknown but rather important role a evacuation ship from Java to Australia days before the Japanese invasion. Here information from Australian and US sources were plentiful. Like the Pacific War 42-45 forum or the The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941-1942 . But Abbekerk also appeared in several books of that period, in veteran websites etc.

Wallflower finding Abbekerks lifeboats

I also found out that a quick internet search on ships in the same convoy often gave interesting and usefull information. Especially warships as for warships as a rule there is a lot more to find than on merchant ships. For Abbekerk I came in contact with Sherley Fielden who has a small website for the corvette Wallflower. She got me the most rewarding and moving  moment of my research: a colour painting of Abbekerk lifeboats found by Wallflower.

And if you find information, try to get in contact with its source. Often more is known that’s not on the internet. This way I got in contact with several people I would have never found otherwise.

Books, newspapers and more:
In this chapter I will add some (reviews) of – mainly Dutch – books later.
Also moro and more online Newspapers are being added to the Internet: I found some intersting articles on Abbekerk here: online historical newspaperarchive .

This section is still being build and will grow in the next months

Peter